In Western capitals before February 2022, the power discrepancy between Russia and Ukraine was judged to be so lopsided that little could be done to deter Moscow from imposing its will on its smaller and weaker neighbor. In a haze of post–Cold War complacency, this overrating of Russian power repeatedly led the United States and its NATO allies to defer to the hard men in the Kremlin. Until the eve of war, with Russia’s legions and armored columns poised to strike at Kyiv, Ukraine had been left to accept its doomed fate.
Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest was therefore expected to last only a few weeks, if not a few days, before Ukraine capitulated. Almost four years later, after woefully failing to achieve its mission, Russia has continued to be viewed as a great power that should not be defeated. Meanwhile, despite its exemplary performance on the battlefield, Ukraine is still regarded as a pygmy that warrants modest support but not enough to expel the invaders.
A sobering new book asks whether civilized powers are now failing to deter another conflict that would eclipse any other in our lifetimes in its potential for mass death and destruction. In War and Power, the historian Phillips Payson O’Brien argues that American statecraft in the 21st century has been “a catalogue of bipartisan failure.” Unless it recovers its vision and strategic competence, O’Brien warns, the United States might inadvertently spark a ferocious conflagration with the People’s Republic of China that it could well lose. It is the author’s fervent hope that the specter of armies marching, fleets circling, and rockets flaring will concentrate minds.
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War and Power opens by situating prevalent illusions about conflict in the modern age in a historical context. To O’Brien, head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, the notion that had taken hold ahead of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation”—namely, that Ukraine was militarily outmatched by Russia and therefore wouldn’t stand a chance mano a mano—evidenced a profound misreading of war and ultimately of power itself. Regarding Russia’s dominance over Ukraine as a fait accompli—which mitigated against any serious or sustained attempt to bolster Ukraine’s defenses before Russia invaded—reflected a traditional bias in international politics favoring certain powers that reside in what O’Brien calls “an upper tier of puissance.”
The German historian Leopold von Ranke, who is said to have first coined the phrase “great power,” suggested that a great power could “maintain itself against all others, even when they are united.” The simplistic great power paradigm was reinforced by the growth of “realist” thinking about international relations, which often pays short shrift to nonmilitary metrics in determining the distribution of power in the international system. The shallow description of great power does not merely suggest certain outcomes by armies in the field, but it even gives special consideration to great powers whose ambitions dwarf their neighbors, by an order of magnitude. On this theory, Russia belonged in the top tier of power while Ukraine languished far below, meaning that the former’s claims of interest were accorded far greater respect.
The portrayal of mighty powers as almost magically equipped to project their influence effectively by brute force alone does not withstand close scrutiny. In reality, as O’Brien shows, things are infinitely more complicated and unpredictable once nations let slip the dogs of war. The record of history demonstrates that states have often gone to war with confident predictions about deciding matters quickly in decisive battle—to borrow an old phrase, that
the fighting will be over by Christmas—only to find bloody and protracted military engagements defying the cherished expectations of their architects.
The clinical view of war, with its related “short-war illusion,” obscures the torrent of problems that usually arise once hostilities break out. Certain instruments of power can be decisive in battle. A fabled example is the Battle of Omdurman. In 1898, a British-led force armed with the Maxim, the first self-loading machine gun, killed some 10,000 Sudanese while losing only 48 of their own. But the most advanced weaponry does not necessarily change the nature of war.
It was Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian master strategist, who insisted that the purpose of war is “to force an opponent to submit to our will.” This is not always a matter of hard power or tactical advantage. Asymmetries of power can be exploited, as various “wars of liberation” have borne out. In Indochina, first the French and then the Americans were laid low by a far less advanced and powerful foe because they could not break its will.
In fleshing out the dynamic character of war, O’Brien profiles two elements—“the systemic” and “the human”—that make a farce of the one-dimensional approach to power. These factors point to a deeper methodology that takes account of the complex operations of war as well as the full scope of a nation’s power. It goes without saying that the dimension of power is a function of discrete material factors, including a state’s economic heft and technological prowess, along with the proficiency of its armed forces. But there’s a panoply of other variables that shape a state’s ability to marshal—and sustain—power when conflict flares up: the personality of its leadership, its political structure, the character and condition of its society, as well as the quantity and quality of its allies.
The upshot of O’Brien’s erudite meditation on the wellsprings of power is that epistemological modesty should be far more prominent in statecraft than it tends to be. Much less is known about the multihued foundations and operations of power than is commonly believed. Relying on existing knowledge, an order of battle may shock but not devastate the enemy since, according to Clausewitz, “war is the incalculable collision of two living forces.” In a realm of such uncertainty, anxious foresight is a vital condition of prudent leadership.
A reasonable inference from this is that, as O’Brien observes, “‘great’ powers are rarely great.” After all, they “almost always have major flaws and regularly lose wars.” And though militaries are generally judged by their own merits, they are susceptible to the vulnerabilities of the larger nation that produces them. Given the need to constantly regenerate and adapt military force as it is being destroyed in combat, O’Brien observes, “a military can only be as strong and resilient” as the state and society that underpins it.
Contrary to popular belief, O’Brien shows that wars “are not decided on the battlefield; rather, the battlefield reveals the state of the powers involved.” Battles are not the engine of history they are often made out to be; instead, they are a harsh windowpane exposing the underlying strengths and weaknesses of the belligerents. To illustrate this point, recall that the outward manifestation of Russia’s military strength before its headlong lunge into Ukraine carried hidden liabilities—from rampant corruption to negligent concern for logistics to poor morale among a largely conscript force—even while Ukraine’s smaller status concealed latent energies, including martial élan and a potent sense of national identity.
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What lessons does this incisive historical evaluation impart for the great brewing contest between Washington and Beijing? As the United States and China flirt with direct confrontation, O’Brien is not at all sanguine about the prospects for the liberal order. Given the vast capabilities of these rivals—the only two nations that maintain large forces in land, air, sea, and space, and thus the only real full-spectrum powers in the world today—it’s clear that any war between them would likely be a cataclysm.
The traditional elements that have been the cause of war since time immemorial are in place today in the Indo-Pacific, where the central flash points of the 21st century’s Great Game can be found. The rivalry between the People’s Republic and the United States pits a grasping upstart with a muscular but inexperienced military against a seasoned status quo power with a battle-tested force. The opaque nature of China’s one-party state makes it difficult to glean the true capabilities of Chinese power—especially the support of the populace for the regime’s increasingly assertive foreign policy—but it is considerable by any measure. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, with its transactional leadership style, has alienated and weakened key allies, frittering away long-standing American advantages.
History warns against heeding the siren song of a quick victory. O’Brien contends that the United States would fare well in the opening stages of a conflict owing to its real-world experience of war fighting and its probable technological advantage. He also speculates that it would cede the initiative over time as a result of China’s superior ability to regenerate military force with mass. This seems to align with the public judgment of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the Indo-Pacific commander, who said last May, “The United States will prevail in the conflict as it stands now, with the force that we have right now,” but “really every force element that is salient is [on] a bad trajectory.”
Put differently, revolutionary technologies—including autonomous systems and smart weapons—could vitiate any U.S. advantage in a long conflict, overwhelming America’s arsenal while undermining its willpower. For instance, a barrage of missiles and a swarm of low-cost Chinese drones—Beijing is the world’s leading UAV manufacturer—could wreak havoc on a state-of-the-art U.S. frigate that carries a price tag of $1.2 billion. In this way, China’s hefty military investments and growing blue-water navy would blunt the edge of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and could rapidly erode Americans’ belief that victory is possible at an acceptable price. As always, adaptation is a crucial element in war, and this is what makes the outcome so difficult to foresee. The United States must resolve to become the “arsenal of democracy” once more, this time by leveraging commercial industry’s technological advancements and collaborating with allies abroad to boost our collective defense-industrial capacity.
“The state is the coldest of cold monsters,” Nietzsche wrote. Nothing is more important than strategic necessity when the security of the nation is at stake, as Ukraine has exemplified in our time. Determined not to be erased and absorbed by a brigand empire, it has transformed itself into a premier apprentice of the dark art of power. Before the war, Kyiv did not boast a single UAV in its arsenal. This year, after ramping up drone production, it is on track to have 4 million. Taiwan may or may not attempt to follow suit. It could decide that, in the face of a fearsome People’s Liberation Army merely 110 miles away across the Taiwan Strait (and with a dubious commitment from its distant superpower patron), it has little choice but to submit to its old overlords on the mainland.
Power remains the hardest currency in this accursed world. But as O’Brien’s insightful work proves, knowing how to use it must be paired with knowing how to recognize and develop it. The price for any nation that fails to evolve a holistic approach to power will be exorbitant. Just ask the Kremlin.
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